Chapter Eight #2
“No.” I do another hair toss. “My sister Bea is even worse.”
Nikos manages to spit out a little “aaarrrrgggghhh” like he’s a werewolf pirate, dragging our attention away from each other and back to him as the feathers keep coming out of his mouth. If the idiot just stopped trying to cuss me out—or worse—it would stop.
If he doesn’t, poor Barkley is going to end up as bald as a Thanksgiving turkey before it goes into the oven.
The rooster is far too vain to accept that fate (even though it’s not painful or permanent) without registering his displeasure.
I’m definitely getting my toes pecked when I get home.
Therefore, I might as well make it worth getting a new pedicure.
“Sorry,” I say to Nikos, ignoring Darius’s glare. “Were you trying to say something? I can’t quite catch it with all those feathers in your mouth.”
“Witch,” Darius says in warning.
“Fine,” I say with a huff, and then wriggle my fingers again.
Nikos coughs up one last speckled tail feather and launches right into a tirade about how horrible witches are or some such shit.
I’m not really paying attention because Darius moves closer to me so we are standing hip to hip, and it has discombobulated every nerve in my body.
There’s the tingle of anticipation as I take in the scar above his eyebrow, the nick out of his right ear, the way his fingers flex as if he’s trying not to reach out and touch me.
My guy, ignore whatever instinct is telling you to keep your distance. I am fun to touch.
His jaw is clamped closed so tight even his shifter teeth are gonna suffer from the pressure.
Forget restrained, Darius is straitjacketed into place with industrial-grade straps tied by someone with a rope kink.
The temptation to find out what happens when all that trussed-up want is let loose has me distracted and breathing hard.
Something in the way he’s looking at me shifts as if he knows exactly what he’s doing to me just by breathing, and one side of his mouth curls upward. Then he reaches out and rests his hand on the small of my back as he turns his attention to the still-ranting Nikos.
He says something.
Nikos says something.
I can’t hear any of it because of the blood rushing in my ears as lust-inspired adrenaline blasts through me.
The weight of his hand isn’t much, but it still manages to feel like everything.
His fingers flex and the tip of his pinkie brushes my bare skin in the gap between the hem of my sweater and the waistband of my jeans.
It’s all I can do not to twist around and climb him like a tree while ripping all our clothes off.
I’ve been horny before, but this is ridiculous. I have got to find that charm he hid on me to glitch out my powers before I do something really stupid.
“Make one more dumb comment, Nikos,” Darius says, jerking my attention back to the disaster unfolding in front of me rather than the one in my head, “and I will end you.”
Nikos goes silent for a second—which seems like a record for the whole three hours I’ve known he existed—and then straightens his spine so he’s at his full height (which is still a good two inches shorter than Darius).
“She’s just a witch,” Nikos says, his tone hot and angry. “We’re your pack.”
“She’s more than that,” Artemis says as she steps between the two men. “She’s his fated mate, and together they’ll break the pack’s jinx.”
Nikos snorts dismissively, his gaze still locked on Darius. “That’s made-up bullshit just like all your prophecies.”
Okay, I may have agreed with the asshole about the fated mates thing, but he is not going to get away with insulting a nice—if eccentric—old lady like Artemis. So I do what I always do. I act.
Just as Darius starts to take a swing at his second-in-command, I whisper a little fuck-you spell, and poof, Nikos turns into a life-sized macaroni salad sculpture of himself.
I have a whole half a second to admire my work before Darius’s fist connects with pasta-and-mayo-Nikos’s jaw and sends globs of it flying.
Darius looks down at his knuckles covered in goop and lets out an annoyed groan. “Why are you always doing that?”
“I have never turned someone into macaroni salad before,” I tell him.
Am I being obnoxiously literal? Yes.
There’s nothing that says I can’t exact revenge on Artemis’s behalf and annoy Darius at the same time. I’m a multitasker. “It just seemed an appropriate punishment for being a jerk to Artemis.”
“And like I said before, it’s my job to correct that,” he says, grinding out each word from between clenched teeth. “Not yours. I am the alpha.”
“Well, then, do it, alpha,” I say with a shrug.
And he does, glaring down Nikos’s fellow shitheads in the pack until they back off. “I am not asking for anyone’s permission to marry the witch tonight. It’s happening because I’m the alpha and I say so.”
My brain jerks to a shuttering stop, which pretty much never happens, but this—this—seems an appropriate time to have a moment of What the fuck?
Marry?
Tonight?
What. The. Fuck.
“Maybe you should ask my permission,” I say, squashing down the giddy feeling that I tell myself is not excitement or anticipation about a naked wedding night with one particular alpha werewolf. “No, you definitely should ask my permission, but I’ll save you the time: The answer is no.”
Darius hooks his finger into my belt loop again (I’m beginning to think this guy has a thing for belt loops and that I can work with that), but this time he tugs me so close that I’m plastered against him front to front and it’s fucking delicious.
I mean, everything just fits together or makes me wonder how much fun it will be to make it fit.
He dips his head so his mouth is only inches from mine and says, “Turn him back.”
I give myself a mental shake because somewhere between three seconds ago and now, I lost my ability to form a single solitary thought. “What?”
“Nikos,” Darius says, lifting his head even as his gaze flicks to my mouth for a second. “Turn him back.”
Driven by the desperation not to give in to the pheromones and rise up on my tiptoes as if I really am his fated mate, I manage to call up the not-worried-about-a-damn-thing Effie the rest of the world knows. “Then you’ll take back whatever charm you’ve hidden on me?”
One side of his mouth quirks up because the sexy jerk knows he’s got me. “Then we’ll go talk. In private.”
“Why would I do that?” I say, still fighting even though I know the battle is lost.
“Because you don’t have a choice.” He lowers his head again—this time even more—but changes the angle at the last possible second and instead of kissing me, he moves so his lips nearly brush my ear and whispers, “I’m going to the cabin across the street, and you’re either going to walk with me of your own volition or you’re going to do your poof thing and appear inside with me like magic whether you want to or not, witch. ”
“I have a name,” I mumble, barely hearing myself above the blood rushing in my ears as my whole body heats up in anticipation of what he’s silently teasing me with.
“Effie,” Darius says, making my name sound like a promise he can’t wait to fulfill, “turn Nikos back into himself and come with me.”
I don’t want to do either of those things, but the truth of it is that Nikos is starting to smell under the heat of the late afternoon sun, and until I find a way to negate the stupid boomerang charm Darius planted, I am stuck next to him. Today really is beginning to suck.
“I liked you better when you just grunted a lot,” I say, taking a step away from Darius.
I summon a reverse spell before pushing it at Nikos.
There’s another honeysuckle-scented ripple in the air.
The bits of macaroni-salad Nikos that went flying when Darius punched him zoom through the air and connect with the rest of him, a loud snap sounds a second later, and then Nikos is back to his regular self.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” Nikos says as soon as he’s no longer a macaroni-salad man.
“Oops,” I say, squinting at a nonexistent spot on his shoulder. “I missed some.”
“The fuck,” he hollers as he spins around trying to figure out what part of him hasn’t transformed.
Leaving him to it, I fall into step next to Darius, and we walk to the large cabin on the other side of the town square, leaving a panicky Nikos in our wake.
“That was funny, but there will be consequences,” Darius says as he stops in front of the cabin’s door.
“What consequences?” I give him a sassy smirk because I refuse to let him know how much being close to him affects me. “Are you going to spank me?”
“No.” He opens his front door and steps aside so I can walk through first. “I think you’d like it too much.”